


things invisible to see

by mayleavestars



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: (as is ezri's brand of course), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fix-It, Healing, Identity Issues, guest appearances: ben; garak; the malevolent ghost of gul dukat, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 08:41:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13700919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayleavestars/pseuds/mayleavestars
Summary: “Do you ever think,” says Ezri, “about the fact that, with any luck - if the war spares us - we’ll have longer to live than this? That these will be - not the central, but the instigating events of our lives. Our origin points, maybe.”Ziyal looks up sharply, puts down her flower. “I don’t,” she says, looking caught off-guard.“I haven’t either,” Ezri admits, “not until this conversation. But I think maybe I should start.”





	things invisible to see

**Author's Note:**

> title and section quotes from song by john donne. it makes no thematic sense i just like pretty words. 
> 
> some musings on the canon divergence at the end.

**1\. go and catch a falling star**

_Damar hears the girl tell her father she loves him; witnesses their embrace. He should shoot now; he’d shot faster, in murkier cases, for the sake of the state. She deserves to die; he doesn’t know, then, why he opens his mouth._

_“Do you know that that girl did, Dukat?” he asks coldly, and Ziyal steps forward, pulling out of her father’s embrace._

_“He does know,” she says with her head held high, “and he forgives me.”_

_He still shoots. He still shoots, but something breaks through years of training, and his hand shakes when he does it, just a little bit. Maybe it’s the defiant look in her eyes, or his wonder at the fact that Dukat has reevaluated himself._

_He still shoots; Ziyal tries to step aside, but still falls; Dukat still holds her body in her arms._

_When Jabara and Bashir will save her later, pulling her back from the brink of death, Dukat won’t listen when he’s told she’s not dead._

-

Ezri’s seen her around. 

She’s always dressed elegantly; there’s always a bright look in her eyes, brighter perhaps than Ezri would expect. She doesn’t know how to conceptualize children like Ziyal; she knows not to broadcast the sheltered Federation mindset the way she (Jadzia) remembers Julian doing. All the same, she doesn’t seek her out. On top of it all, she’s friends with Garak, and Ezri knows there’s no positive feelings happening on that end. 

At one of Kira’s springball matches, though, Ziyal’s there with Jake Sisko and the latter beckons her over. The girl gives Ezri a shy, slightly frightened smile; Ezri can’t think what reason Ziyal herself has to be scared. 

“I’m Ezri Dax,” she says for Ziyal’s benefit. 

“Yes, I know,” is the reply, and Ezri wonders what she’s meant to read in Ziyal’s wide-eyed nod. She’s not used to being the less intimidated party in a conversation. 

“I guess the name gives it away,” Ezri says with a little smile. “I was on the ship with Jadzia’s symbiont when it get sick - you know, desperate straits, can’t be too picky. I don’t want to reflect badly on my countrymen. This was not the best the Symbiosis Commission had to offer. I never even _wanted_ to get -” 

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Ziyal says softly. “I’m sure you’re very worthy of the Dax symbiont.” 

Ezri’s mastered the art of recounting the symbiont story by now - laconic, slightly comedic if applicable, conciliatory: “I’m sorry I’m such a poor replacement for a woman you loved.” She’s not sure if people pick up on that subtext; if they do, they don’t tend to point it out. 

She didn’t think it would be help, hearing that kind of thing from someone. Her unworthiness of the Dax symbiont is not an abstract insecurity, the way it was with Jadzia, but an objective fact. 

She doesn’t know, then, why she feels a bit like crying. 

“Thank you,” she says, very softly, and Ziyal smiles in return. 

  


**2\. tell me where all past years are**

_The conversation with Benjamin Sisko is not among Ziyal’s favorites._

_“I want to spare you the details, if you’re okay with that,” he says quietly. “Because I don’t know if I’d want to hear, in your place.”_

_“I don’t.” The Captain’s bruises have almost healed, but there is enough indication of what had transpired in that cave for Ziyal to want to leave it at that. “And I know the core of it, with regards to me at least. He - he doesn’t want to acknowledge that I’m alive.”_

_Sisko nods slightly. “He didn’t say much about you. But yes, he assumes you died when Damar shot you.”_

_“It’s because it’s easier for him,” says Ziyal, and doesn’t know it’s true until she says so. “It might cause him pain to know I’m dead, but if I died I’d have died - well, not uncorrupted, not blindly loyal to him, but only just turning away from him. Not committing to it. He doesn’t - some part of him, I mean - doesn’t want to live with the idea that I…”_

_It's a difficult thing, acknowledging the conditional nature of her father’s love._

_More difficult than it should have been, maybe, considering he’d nearly shot her when they first met._

_“What do you need right now, Ziyal?” Captain Sisko asks quietly._

_“I think I need to survive this,” she responds, “and I think I will.”_

-

“I never told you how sorry I was,” Ziyal says one day at lunch, and Ezri looks at her strangely. “My father killed Jadzia,” she adds by way of explanation, looking down like she hasn’t since they first met. 

“You’re not responsible in the least for your father’s actions,” says Ezri. “You know that, Ziyal.” 

“Yes, but - well. You’d still be serving on the _Destiny_. You wouldn’t have all of Dax’s memories in your head. Everyone talks like it's this grand privilege, but it's hard for you, I can tell.” 

It was strange. Ezri had expected condolences for Dax; condolences for Ezri left her unsure where to go with them. “I don’t quite understand, Ziyal, why you’re always - you always seem to understand things, I suppose.” 

“I don’t understand a great deal, Ezri,” Ziyal smiles slightly. “But I suppose… I suppose, back in the Breen cave. I had to tell myself things. _This isn’t forever, Father will come home_. And then, later, you revise what you tell yourself when that’s no longer comforting. _This isn’t forever. Father wasn’t my whole world_. I’m sorry to have - this wasn’t meant to be all about me, really - but I suppose all I’ve meant to say is that I’m so used to telling myself these things that I look for the need for reassurance in others.” 

“And to think _I’m_ meant to be the therapist,” says Ezri ruefully. She pauses, considers. 

“I should have finished my degree.” She’s thought this ever since the Garak debacle, but putting it into words makes her feel freer, somehow. “I should have - I see now Benjamin must have wanted me to stay, talked himself into accepting me as I am, here. Making me -” she laughs, “- _head counselor_. But he allows himself the luxury of needing so rarely. I couldn’t have, in good conscience, done anything else.” 

“There’s still time,” says Ziyal. She’s lifted up the flower from the Replimat’s table, fiddling with it absentmindedly. “There’s always time.” 

Ezri looks at Ziyal and wonders at the upheavals they’ve each suffered. Each of them have lost the one person they’d spent their whole lives waiting for the emergence of: in Ziyal’s case, her father; in Ezri’s, herself. 

“Do you ever think,” says Ezri, “about the fact that, with any luck - if the war spares us - we’ll have longer to live than this? That these will be - not the central, but the instigating events of our lives. Our origin points, maybe.” 

Ziyal looks up sharply, puts down her flower. “I don’t,” she says, looking caught off-guard. 

“I haven’t either,” Ezri admits, “not until this conversation. But I think maybe I should start.” 

Ziyal nods slightly, but stays quiet for a few minutes. When she speaks, at last, her voice is unsteady. 

“Do you know,” she says, “that when Damar shot me, when I thought I was going to die - I was terrified, and angry, but it made sense to me, too. That I’d ended my life at this semi-heroic high point, that I wouldn’t have to do the hard work of it anymore. Is that awful?” 

“No,” says Ezri ruefully. “I’ve - it’s a more common sentiment than you’d think. War infects us with it.” 

“I think what you said has helped,” says Ziyal, and raises her glass. “Here’s to new beginnings.” 

They drink, and at the end of the evening, Ziyal presses the flower into Ezri’s hand. 

  


**3\. if thou be’st born to strange sights**

_“I didn’t finish_ The Neverending Sacrifice _, Garak,” she says suddenly at the lunch table, and he looks over at her in surprise._

_“You didn’t?” he asks, and there’s a note of hurt in his voice that makes her regret voicing this truth a bit. She pushes past it, though._

_“I didn’t,” she repeats. “I asked Julian about the ending, because I didn’t want to disappoint you. But I didn’t finish the book.”_

_“Did you get bored?” Garak asks, with a small smile. “You young people are all the same; no patience.”_

_“It was quite boring, yes,” Ziyal says, but she can’t quite smile._

_“And now tell me what you’re not telling me, my dear,” says Garak, and Ziyal sighs._

_“It’s not just that it’s boring,” she says quietly. “I could read a boring book for a country I loved. I could read a good book for a country I have - complicated feelings about. But I don’t think I could read a boring book for a country I…”_

_She trails off; looks into the distance so she doesn't have to look at Garak’s face._

_“It is not… It is not that I wish to abandon Cardassia wholly, that I think it has nothing worth salvaging. But I’m not - forgive me, Garak - I am not very interested in reading a, a work of propaganda - for the sake of a culture that...”_

_Garak doesn't immediately respond, so she keeps talking._

_“I don’t think I can, in good conscience, love Cardassia,” she says, and Garak, at last, shakes his head sadly._

_“I will never understand the virtues of honesty, no matter how often you and Julian may extol them to me.”_

_“I’m sorry,” Ziyal says quietly. “I’m sorry I can’t be what you needed me to be.”_

_Garak looks up sharply, and seems to consider what to say for a moment. “My dear,” he says, softly, at last, “I am not the ideal person to have to tell you this - you mustn’t tell Julian that his affirmations have registered in the slightest - but you are not defined by what anybody needs from you.”_

_Ziyal has no idea if he means it, but she knows Garak well enough to know it took a lot for him to say it. She appreciates it, even in this new uncertainty she's cast them into._

__-_ _

The first time Ezri goes with Kira and Ziyal to the Bajoran temple, she asks three times if she’s welcome beforehand. She and Kira get along nicely, but the ghost of Jadzia lingers between them in a pronounced way, the same way it does between Ezri and Julian. She avoids people who see too much of Jadzia in her; she's given up on seeking validation from people who won't see her as herself. She knows why it's difficult, of course; she's a Trill, if a bad one, and a therapist to boot. But she also knows it's cruel to both parties to pretend. 

It’s why she first started spending so much time with Ziyal; she’d barely known Jadzia. It isn’t, of course, why she’d kept doing it. 

They stand in the temple and listen to the service, and Ezri’s eyes are fixed on the orb in the corner as Jadzia’s last memory flickers before her eyes. _This a new memory for this temple_ , she reminds herself. _One day, a Dax host will walk in here and remember this one first._

She doesn’t often think of herself in terms of contributing to the Dax symbiont’s experience. It’s a nice first. 

Ziyal catches her eye, and Ezri looks away from the Orb and back toward the vedek. Everything’s cast in the yellow glow of Bajoran candles, and the faces around Ezri are peaceful, relaxed. _This is a refuge_ , thinks Ezri, and wonders how Dukat could ever have thought he understood Bajorans, committing a murder in a place such as this. 

She and Ziyal were both formed here, Ezri thinks; Ziyal grew independent of her father here, and that same father murdered Jadzia. 

Ezri isn’t grateful for these circumstances, but she can let herself be glad she’s here; she’s earned that, the both of them have. 

Walking back to Ezri’s quarters, Ziyal presses their palms together and holds tight. 

  


**4\. all strange wonders that befell thee**

_“You’ll never believe what happened,” says Quark, looking up from the communique he’s received from his nephew. “The Cardassian fleet defected - they’ve attacked the Dominion - the war’s going to end, Ziyal.”_

_The world is strange and terrible and fragile and free; Ziyal sits in Vic’s, lets tears fall down her cheeks, and cannot say for whom they fall._

_This will be the never-ending sacrifice future generations will read about; not for the collapsed State, but for the things worth saving._

-

“The sunset, Ezri,” says Ziyal softly, and Ezri turns away from where she’s adjusting her shirt collar in the mirror and walks toward the hotel room window, open onto Bajor’s capital. Bajor’s centers of life burst with the same warmth as the candles in its temples; it’s a light that’s never been extinguished, but Ezri feels somber as she looks out and remembers how hard the Cardassians had tried. 

“It’s all right,” said Ziyal quietly. “We’re rebuilding.” She says this, and then gives a surprised laugh. “For once, the _we_ here can be accurately interpreted both ways.” 

“Bajor’s a beautiful planet,” says Ezri, and Ziyal nods silently and walks away from the window and towards the closet. 

“Garak’s sent me a dress for the gallery opening, can you believe it?” Ziyal asks conversationally as she fiddles with the closet door. “He must have worked on it bit by bit all month. I suppose I’m grateful he still has time for things of that sort, no matter how little time it is.” 

“It’s time we have to find,” says Ezri matter-of-factly. Ziyal’s beautiful, her hair braided and pinned in a traditional Bajoran style. Briefly, looking at her from the right angle, Ezri sees the dark scar from where Damar had shot her. Then Ziyal straightens the dress and smiles at Ezri. 

“Could you fasten it in the back?” she asks, and Ezri complies. 

They’re both products of the war, Ezri thinks idly as the two of them step outside into the warm Bajoran evening; the only time she'd been a good therapist in her life, maybe, was when she'd identified it as their origin point. There’s another world where Ezri serves on the _Destiny_ , flinching away from the subspace channels when they display calls from her mother, or throws herself into becoming an adequate replacement for Jadzia. There’s worlds where Ziyal grits her teeth through Cardassia’s stares or lies dead on Deep Space Nine’s floor. These worlds aren’t here. 

“I’m proud of you,” she says, thinking about Ziyal’s delicate brushstrokes and the unified focus her physicality carries when she’s in the midst of working on a piece. Bajor needs her; Cardassia needs her; exactly one Trill had needed her without knowing it, and Ziyal had appeared in her life by luck. Ezri sees, now, the burden that this creates; she hopes with the entirety of herself that she will help Ziyal bear it. 

She opens her mouth to attempt to express this, any of it, but Ziyal is already pausing on the steps of the hotel and pulling Ezri in for a kiss. When that’s done, her eyes are shining and the deep red of the sunset reflects on her hair. 

__“I’m proud of us both,” says Ziyal, and they go forward from there.__

**Author's Note:**

> "but katia," you may say, "if damar doesn't actually kill ziyal, does he still manage to feel the guilt that fuels his heel-face turn?" 
> 
> to which i respond: "this is a survival au created for purposes of femslash and literally nothing else. try not to think about it too hard." 
> 
> this is... unpolished, but i wanted to post it. might edit it more later idk.
> 
> FINALLY fixed some of the more glaring issues as of 7/4/18


End file.
